It’s illegal for businesses and law enforcement to profile a person based on their race, gender, or ethnicity, yet millions of Americans are being profiled every day based on their online consumer behavior and demographics.

Known as consumer profiling for behavioral advertising purposes, this type of profiling is largely unregulated.

The result, according to two recent articles in the journal of Computer Law & Security Review, is that consumers have less privacy and are being targeted by advertisers using increasingly sophisticated measures, which may include efforts to alter behavior based on online tracking and profiling.

The articles examine existing privacy laws to determine how well they protect consumers’ privacy and look at possible ways to protect consumer privacy including adopting new laws, using technology to protect privacy and voluntary efforts by the advertising industry. Continue reading …

Digital Ocean is a VPS/Cloud hosting provider. For just $5 per month, you can get yourself a Cloud server with 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB super-fast SSD, free snapshots, plus backups for a minimal fee. All via a simple graphical interface.